[jacobolus]

Charlie Rose has been an absolutely abysmal interviewer his whole career, which is a tragedy considering how good they are at booking great guests. He asks long leading questions, proceeds to answer them himself, and then tacks on an “isn’t that right?” at the end. When the guest inevitably says “that’s not how I think of it, Charlie, let me explain ...”, he then interrupts and repeats his original claim again. Ugh, drives me crazy.

He also kisses up like mad to a few people (Tom Friedman? Yuck.) while stomping all over experts he doesn’t agree with, often because he doesn’t understand their point.

My favorite was when at some point maybe 15 years ago he was interviewing I think Bill Joy, and asked one of his long multi-sentence leading questions. To which the response was ... pause ... “well, duh.”

* * *

Thankfully Terry Gross single-handedly makes up for all the bad interviewers in the world.

[maroonblazer]

Can't agree more with this assessment of Rose. I don't understand how he got or keeps his job.

I wish they'd give that position to Alec Baldwin. His work on "Here's the Thing" has proven him to be an adept interlocutor. While he also has a tendency to talk over his guests it's usually to help enlighten or at least to say something funny.

[tclancy]

I feel like he was a good interviewer when he was younger. I'm just into my 40s now and I can see how you could get worse with age as you start to assume you already know the answers. It's why I've stopped listening to the "In Our Time" podcast in the past few years: all of a sudden Melvyn Bragg talks to the panel like he's double-parked.

[cynicalbastard]

he was tolerable even five years ago!

[jacobolus]

I haven’t watched much Charlie Rose in the past 5–10 years, because he was so infuriating to watch before that. So I disagree with your assertion. If you go back and watch his older interviewers I suspect you will change your mind.